


Every Hero Has One

by Xparrot



Category: Ben 10
Genre: Backstory, Ben 10: Alien Force, Canon Related, Drama, Gen, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-07
Updated: 2010-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-10 10:45:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/Xparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleven defining moments in Kevin Levin's life so far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Hero Has One

**Author's Note:**

> ...So now I'm writing Ben 10 fic, apparently. Erm?
> 
> This is an attempt to make sense of some of the contradictory elements of Kevin's backstory between the original series and Alien Force. It's true to canon as best I can manage, as of the first half of season 1 of Ultimate Alien; no idea how it might be jossed after that. Spoilers through s3 of Alien Force.

### 0.

Sometimes it goes like this:

A Kryptonian ship crashes in a Kansas cornfield. Or: the Wayne family decides to go to the movies. Or: a spider bites a high school student. Or: a scientist is exposed to gamma radiation.

Or: one summer night, a pod holding the most powerful device in the universe falls out of the sky at the feet of a boy out camping with his grandfather and cousin.

And sometimes it goes other ways.

### 1.

When Kevin Levin was three years old, he climbed up on the couch to get to the window overlooking the apartment's narrow balcony. He pressed his chubby hands to the glass to peer outside—and then he was peering through his own hands, his skin and muscle and bone all clear as water.

Kevin started to cry—it didn't quite hurt, but it didn't _not_ hurt, either, every cell in his hands and arms transforming to match the silica crystals he'd absorbed, reshaping themselves one by one.

He'd only just started wailing when his father came and swept him up in his arms, put him on his lap and murmured, "Shh, Kevin, it's okay—you're okay, you're still you. Here," and he put his big hands over Kevin's little ones, hiding their solid transparent flesh. "Can you feel my hands? Feel my skin—it's like yours, right? You know what your skin feels like. When you put your hands together, they're soft; you can squish them together, like rubber. Remember what that feels like. That's it, you can do it."

Kevin sobbed and sniffled, but his dad kept talking to him, slow and patient, until his tears dried up, and when his dad took his hands away, Kevin had his own soft pink hands again, instead of the scary hard glass ones. "Good boy," his dad said, kissing the top of his head. "You did great, Kevin."

It happened again when he touched the brick fireplace, but Kevin didn't cry then; he just closed his eyes and remembered his dad's hands, the rough calluses on his palms and fingers, and how warm they were, clasped over his own.

### 2.

When Kevin was four years old, his mother came into his bedroom late one night, so late that faint gray light was leaking around the edges of the window's curtains. She woke him up, hugging him so tightly that it was almost hard to breathe, like she never wanted to let him go. So tightly he could feel her shaking, like she was cold, even though the summer night was muggy and hot.

"It's your father, Kevin," his mother said at last.

The next morning and for days after that, people kept coming to the apartment, men and women, some Kevin knew and more he didn't. Some of them were regular people like his mom, and some of them were weird, the way he and his dad were weird. They patted him on the shoulder and told him he was very brave, like his father had been very brave. They told him his dad had been a hero, and that his dad would always be in his heart, and that his dad had loved him very much.

They didn't tell him when his dad was coming home, though.

### 3.

When Kevin turned six, his mother gave him a special birthday present. It was a weird present, a little round thing with green and black triangles on it. But his mother told him, "It was your dad's," and after that the badge was Kevin's most prized possession, even if he couldn't do much of anything with it.

Sometimes he would take it out anyway, hold it in his hand. It was bigger around than his palm and heavy, heavier than plastic, heavier than a lot of metals, even. It wasn't metal, though, at least not any metal he could absorb; nothing happened when he tried. Occasionally the green triangles would blink, but usually it was quiet. When he held it, though, he could feel a strange faint warmth, the way a stone got warm after sitting in the sun. Sometimes he liked to pretend that it was his dad, like his ghost was clasping Kevin's hand over the badge.

The best thing about his present, though, was that whenever he showed it to his mom, she would talk about his dad. Sometimes she'd tell him cool amazing stories about his dad's adventures in space, better than any comic book; sometimes she'd just talk about what his dad had liked to eat, what sports teams he'd rooted for.

"Just remember, he's still with us," his mother would tell Kevin, cuddling him close. "He'll always be a part of you."

### 4.

When Kevin was seven years old, he accidentally stuck his finger in an electric socket. Except that it wasn't like in the cartoons, when the light flashes like crazy and you can see the bones inside. And it wasn't an accident, either.

All growing up, his mom would never let him have any toy that needed a battery, and she didn't like him to play with anything that had to be plugged in—they didn't have a TV or a computer at home; she wouldn't even vacuum when he was in the room. "Electricity's dangerous, sweetie," she told Kevin. "I don't want you getting hurt."

But at school some of the other kids had stuff, and once at recess Dwayne Algar felt sorry for him and let Kevin try out his Gameboy. Only he couldn't play it, because as soon as the boy put the game in Kevin's hands, he felt a weird prickling warmth, kind of like when he touched his dad's badge, and the Gameboy's screen went dark. The same thing happened when Suzanna Phan tried letting him listen to her Walkman. The next day their stuff was working again; the batteries had just needed replacing. But the other kids stopped lending stuff to Kevin after that.

A few weeks later, it was raining, so recess was indoors, and Dwayne got in a fight with Javier Torres. They were wrestling on the floor in the corner while the teacher was busy helping some girls feed the class hamster, but the classroom's extension cord was in that corner, and the window had been left open so rain had gotten on the floor and on the electric cords and Kevin knew it wasn't safe. He was going to tell the teacher, except then Javier kicked, halfway yanking out a couple of the plugs that Dwayne was rolling on, and Kevin moved before he could think, lunging forward to grab the wet extension cord before it could hurt Dwayne or Javier.

But before he even touched the cord, a big bright spark jumped from the plugs to his hand with a _crack_. The classroom's lights blinked, and Kevin yelped and jumped back, and Dwayne started crying like a baby, and Javier and all the other kids stared at Kevin.

Ms. Wakowski sent them all to the nurse's office, even though Dwayne and Javier hadn't really gotten hurt and Kevin didn't have a cut or a burn or anything. None of them told the teacher or the nurse what really happened, but the other boys kept staring at Kevin, wanting to know what he'd done. Kevin couldn't tell them, though, because all he really knew was that his father would've done it, and they wouldn't get that.

When Kevin got home from school that day, he didn't tell his babysitter about any of that. But he waited until Annie was talking on the phone—the old phone with a cord; his mom didn't let Annie bring a cell phone into the apartment. Then, while Annie wasn't looking, he used his fingernails to pry the plastic cover off the electric socket above the baseboard, behind the armchair. He ran his fingers over the three slots, not really knowing what he was doing, though he knew he wasn't supposed to be doing it. But it was like he couldn't help it. Like scratching an itchy bug bite, even when his mom told him that would only make it worse.

Itchy like the feeling he'd gotten when he held Dwayne's GameBoy, and Kevin scratched at the electric outlet, and then there was a _crack_ louder than in the classroom, and the lights went out and the hum of the refrigerator stopped and the apartment all of a sudden was really quiet.

"Kevin?" Annie hollered, "Kevin, what the heck did you do?" and she hung up the phone and came and found him behind the chair. In the sunlight though the window, she saw the socket with the cover off, and cried, "Oh my God, did you just stick your finger in that—you could've killed yourself, oh my God, what would your mother do to me? You can't tell her, Kevin, you can't tell her what you did. It'll be our secret, just make sure you never do it again." She picked up the plastic cover and jammed it back on the socket, then wiped her brow, rocked back on her heels and asked him, "Are you okay? Jesus, you're one lucky kid—you're sure you didn't get hurt?"

"Nope." Kevin shook his head, held up his soft pink unmarked hands, grinning. "It didn't hurt at all."

### 5.

When Kevin was nine, a guy named Mark started coming over to the apartment a lot. There'd been other guys who came over to see his mother, or who she'd go out to see, but usually it was only for a few times. But Mark was tall and he had black hair like Kevin's and he kept coming over.

That was bad enough, but the next time the school principal called his mother in after school, Mark came, too, and sat in the other chair next to his mother, listening attentively as the principal said, "I'm sorry I had to call you out of work, Mrs. Levin, but this is the third fight Kevin's been in this week. Boys will be boys, but he bloodied Nigel Carter's nose today..."

"I'm sorry," his mom said, like she always did, like she couldn't come up with anything better to say.

Usually she'd tell Kevin to apologize, too, but today Mark murmured something to her, and talked to the principal for a bit, and then they all left school together. They drove back home in Mark's Porsche, and Kevin's mom squeezed in back while Mark let Kevin sit in the front seat, so if he sat up he could look out the windshield and see how fast they were going.

At a red light, Mark put his hand on Kevin's shoulder and asked, "Why'd you fight those boys, Kevin?"

Mark's hand was heavy but it wasn't warm, not warm enough for Kevin to feel it through his t-shirt. He squirmed and shrugged off the hand, said, "I dunno. They started it."

"What'd they do?" Mark asked, and he was smiling, his stupid nice smile and Kevin didn't know why his mom would ever like a guy with a smile like that.

"They called me a freak," Kevin said.

"Why'd they do that?"

"'Cause I'm a freak," Kevin said. All the kids had known it for years, even if the teachers were too dumb to notice. New kids at the school got told by the other kids. Most of them knew it meant they shouldn't get near him, especially not if they had a game or a cell phone or anything electronic. But some kids thought it meant Kevin was a target. They were dumber than the teachers, but Kevin didn't really mind. It was getting to be kind of fun. Like how he'd kicked Nigel right in his stupid nose, and the blood had gushed out like from a faucet, all red and sticky.

It wasn't quite as awesome as when he'd reached under the desk in the computer room and grabbed the main power cable and all the screens flashed blue and then went black, and the teacher didn't know what was going on, and none of the kids would look at him. But then nothing was that awesome, really.

"Kevin," his mom said, "you're not a freak," but she was lying. She'd stopped putting plastic covers on the apartment's electric outlets, though she still wouldn't use the vacuum when Kevin was in the room.

"No, you're not," Mark said firmly, and patted Kevin's shoulder again. He wasn't lying; he was just stupid.

He didn't know about Kevin's father; he didn't know about the green and black badge Kevin kept in his special shoebox in his closet, or that Kevin's hands had once been glass. He didn't know anything, and Kevin hated him more than he hated the teachers, for acting like he did.

Kevin reached to the radio, to turn it on loud like his mom didn't like, but when he touched the button a tickling spark jumped from his fingers, and then he knew what he could do. It wasn't any harder than taking the energy, to send it out again, everything he'd swallowed up lately. The radio blared louder than he'd ever heard it, until it was squealing with earsplitting feedback, and the windshield wipers were thrashing back and forth and the engine was revving and the windows were going up and down and his mom was shouting at him and Mark was hollering, "What—what the _fuck_?" like Kevin had never heard him say, and Kevin laughed and laughed because now even Mark would know the truth, stupid as he was.

### 6.

When Kevin was ten, his mother came to him with Mark and told him, "Kevin, we're going to be moving into Mark's place. You'll like it there—he's got a house with a yard, and a big-screen TV..."

"No," Kevin said. "We're not."

"Kevin," his mother said.

"I'll break that fucking TV," Kevin yelled. "I'll melt it, I'll bust it open!"

"No, you won't," Mark said, with the tight fixed smile he always got around Kevin now. "It'll be fun, you'll see."

"I don't want to live with this jerk," Kevin told his mother. "You're so fucking stupid for liking him."

"You will not talk to your mother that way!" Mark said, raising his voice louder than he usually got.

"You can't talk to me at all!" Kevin shouted back. "You're not my fucking father!"

Mark's face went white and his hand came up fast, and Kevin had been in enough fights to know what that meant. He knew what to do about it, too—the teachers wouldn't let him near any fuse boxes, but he'd sucked a few car batteries dry in the parking lot after school today, and still had some juice left. Enough that when he grabbed Mark's arm, there was a zap and the guy's spine stiffened straight like a stick, his teeth clicking as his jaw locked; and then he went down, hard. Kevin grinned when his head whacked against the floor. It made a cool sound, better than in the movies, fuller, kind of.

"Mark!" his mother cried, dropping down to her knees next to her stupid boyfriend, shaking his shoulder. Mark groaned, and Kevin's mother looked away from him, to glare at Kevin.

"You're lucky he's not your father, Kevin," she said, and it was weird how she said it, calm, like she wasn't even angry, but it still made the hairs on the back of Kevin's neck stand on end, like when he was drinking in a really strong current. "Your father wouldn't have stood for this. Go to your room."

So Kevin went to his room, flopped down crosswise on his bed on his back and kicked the wall, while he listened to the muffled voices in the living room, Mark telling his mother that it was okay, that he didn't need to go to the hospital.

Then he said Kevin's mother's name, in that same calm way she'd said Kevin's name, and went on, "I know he's your son, and of course you—we—of course you love him; but we're not equipped to handle him. He's got...problems, that we can't help him with. We can't understand what he's going through."

"Mark..." his mother said, and she still didn't sound angry, only sad.

"What about that organization you told me about? Where his father came from—they'd be able to deal with him, and what he can do. Better than normal human beings like us..."

Kevin didn't wait to hear what his mother said to that. It didn't matter anyway; it was true. He was a freak and they were just stupid normal people and he didn't belong here.

He didn't want to be dealt with, either, though; he didn't want anyone else who wasn't his dad telling him what he should do, or shouldn't.

So that night he left, before his mother and Mark could decide anything. He pulled on his sweatshirt and threw the stuff in his top drawer into his school backpack. He thought about taking the green and black badge, but it was heavy and he didn't need it anyway. He'd tried but he couldn't draw power from it, couldn't do anything but hold it and let it warm up his hand. And that was better with a regular old battery. Plus it wasn't a real radio or toy or whatever, so it wasn't like he could sell it for anything.

He left the badge behind, picked up his backpack and crawled out of his window onto the balcony, then down the fire escape.

The bus station was three blocks away. Kevin jogged down the sidewalk, keeping out of the streetlights, even though no one was looking for him yet. He stopped at a soda machine outside a closed convenient store—he put both hands to the brightly lit red-and-white sign and sucked in, making the light flicker and dim; then he sent the power surging back out again. The light bulb flashed bright, then popped, and the mechanism inside clicked and whirred brokenly and spilled a pile of coins out on the ground.

There were enough to buy a bus ticket to Phoenix. The man at the booth raised his shaggy eyebrows as Kevin counted out fistfuls of change, but gave him the ticket. The bus was parked in the lot in back, its engine idling; it was mostly empty, and Kevin found a seat in the back, slouched low below the window with his hands stuck in his sweatshirt pockets. Half an hour later he was on his way.

He didn't really want to go to Phoenix; it was hot and dry and boring in the desert. But in Phoenix he could get more money, enough to buy a ticket to New York. Kevin had never been there, but he'd seen movies and TV shows, knew there was enough power in that sleepless city, all the cars and lights going all night long, that he'd never run out.

### 7.

When Kevin was eleven, an alien monster saved his butt in an arcade.

Ben Tennyson was the first kid Kevin had ever met who was as freakish as himself, as his father had been. Ten times as freakish, even, and for a little while Kevin couldn't get over how awesome it was, the way Ben got what it was like, the way he thought what Kevin could do was cool instead of scary or bad or wrong. Kevin even thought he might tell Ben about his dad, and the badge with the same green markings as his special watch, thought that Ben might understand.

Except that Ben turned out to be so, so stupid, stupider than his mother or Mark or the teachers at school, the stupidest guy Kevin had ever met, that he had so much power and he didn't want to anything with it, not anything worth doing. That all he wanted was to be some stupid lame superhero, like he was living in a comic book. Like he didn't know that superheroes were just made up stories, and all real heroes did was die.

Kevin knew the truth, though. And he knew that Ben was his ticket, that he wouldn't have to live like a mutant freak in the sewers anymore. Money was power, an awesome power, and it should be his, the way electricity was his. But money was harder to get than touching a transistor and taking what was there. He'd tried zapping ATMs but they were trickier than vending machines or arcade games; they shorted out without coughing up the serious cash.

But Ben could do more—Ben's power could do more. So Kevin took it, the same as he took any power he could; his right, to have whatever he could take.

The Omnitrix's energy was nothing like electricity, and it hurt, the first time—hurt but didn't hurt, like when he'd first absorbed glass, all those years ago. To feel his cells change, twist and contort into something else—it hurt, but it was better than the strongest electric current he'd ever tapped. It was like the tingling warmth of holding his father's badge, times a thousand, so intense that Kevin could scarcely remember ever feeling anything else, nothing but the strength and speed and fire surging through his body, his body that wasn't his body anymore but something else—something alien and awesome and terrifying and _powerful_.

And finally Ben and his stupid family went away, but Kevin still had his power, and at first he thought that he had it made. Until the day he changed and couldn't change back, couldn't remember what his own body felt like anymore. He knew ten different skins, furry and scaly and sticky and plastic cool and ghostly insubstantial; but he couldn't remember what regular human skin should feel like.

He sat alone in the sewer's smelly dark, clasped his hands—talons, paws, flippers—tightly together and tried to remember the give of his own flesh, the texture of his skin, not as smooth as rubber, not as rough as hair; lines and calluses, the tickling brush of tiny fingerprint ridges, the clamminess of sweat. The warmth of his father's big hands, folded over his—but it had been too long; his father was only a faint childhood memory, hazy and vague, powerless.

Kevin had always been a freak, once people figured him out; but now they didn't have to figure anything out, they'd know just looking at him, and it was all Ben Tennyson's fault. And Kevin had power enough to make him pay for that.

### 8.

There was no sun in the Null Void, no night or day, no seasons. No dates and no anniversaries, so Kevin didn't know how old he was, and didn't care. In the Null Void, all anyone cared about was surviving, and you fought for every second, for every breath you wanted to take. But he was as powerful as anything in the dimension, and stronger than a lot of them—if not as strong as Ben Tennyson, and at first that was why Kevin kept breathing, because every breath gave him a chance to get back, to get even, to do to Tennyson what Tennyson had done to him. To destroy him, completely.

The Null Void was full of freaks, monsters, not because of their species, but because of who they were, what they'd done. But even there Kevin was unique, a freak among freaks, so monstrous that even the largest and strongest prisoners hesitated to attack him. When they did anyway, he had the power to defend himself—usually, at least, if there was only one attacker. When there were more than one, he ran. He was as good at running as he always was, even with his warped, ungainly hulk of a mutated body.

Eventually Kevin learned how to find shelter amid the Null Void's rock and rubble. He learned how to hunker and hide when a magnestorm rose, or when the Null Guardians flapped past. He learned how to hunt with speed and bug-spit and crystal daggers, and how to cook with a blast of flame. He learned how to heave boulders aside—his four arms might have one-tenth the strength of Ben Tennyson's alien muscle, but it was usually enough, in the Null Void's variable gravity—to find the drinkable dew which collected under the stones.

There was never enough food, never enough water, never enough safe places to rest. He learned to live with being hungry and thirsty and tired. As he'd learned to see with eyes that saw in bands of radiation that humans never could perceive; as he'd learned to fly with insectile wings, and climb with paws and claws and six limbs. Until it was hard to recall what it was like to see with human eyes or talk with a human voice.

Occasionally he would try to remember Earth. The taste of ice cream, the smell of car exhaust, the sound of a metal bat hitting a home run. He wasn't quite sure he got anything right anymore.

Sometimes he'd imagine breaking free of the Null Void, imagine hunting down Ben Tennyson with all his new skills. Stabbing him and burning him and tearing him limb from limb. He'd strangle a six-legged lizard-hare for his dinner and picture Ben Tennyson in its place as his talons tightened, imagine his stupid green eyes bulging and his tongue sticking out as he died. At first it made him feel stronger, the rage and bloodthirst enough for him to forget his parched throat. Someday, _someday_, he'd tell himself, and knew he would survive for that vengeance.

After a while, though, he couldn't picture Ben Tennyson's face; it had been too long since he'd seen any human face, and he wasn't sure he got that right anymore, either. He could still remember his enemy's name, but when he spoke it aloud it sounded wrong, not like real words, just meaningless syllables strung together. He remembered his anger, but he didn't feel it anymore.

He wasn't sure he really felt anything anymore. His stomach no longer ached when it was empty, and the twilight not-sunlight glimmer of the Null Void no longer hurt his eyes, and his monstrous hide was too thick for heat or cold to penetrate.

Usually he didn't dream in the moments he risked sleeping, but then once he did. A strange dream—strange, because it was so ordinary, but a different ordinary, an ordinary he hardly believed in anymore. He was asleep, but not on lumpy ground; there were mattress springs sinking under him and the heavy weight of blankets over him, and someone's hand was on his shoulder, a warm hand through his pajamas, shaking him awake. _"Time to get up, Kevin."_

_"But I wanna sleep, Mom,"_ Kevin whined, pulling the blankets up over his head to block out the sunlight shining through his open curtains.

_"Give him a break, hon," _his dad said, _"you know Levins are late risers," _and his mom sighed, but she was smiling. _"Okay, five more minutes, but that's it, or you'll be late for school."_

Then he woke up. There was no bed, no blankets, only the hollow he'd dug in the dirt; there was no sunlight, and no mother beside him.

But when he looked down, he saw a hand on the ground beneath him—a strange hand, as bizarrely alien as any of his mutated limbs, with pink skin pale against the gray dirt, four fingers as skinny and fragile as sticks and a stubby thumb.

He went to poke at this weird appendage, but when he tried to raise his hand, the alien hand moved instead, and when he jumped back, the hand came with him. The bony knuckles knocked against a rough stone, scraping the skin, and Kevin gasped at the sharp spark of pain momentarily numbing his hand—_his_ hand, his fingers and thumb and bloody barked knuckles and pale skin. He pressed his hand down on the ground and dug up a handful of dusty dry dirt, squeezed his fist together until the finer particles sifted from between his fingers and he felt jagged pebbles digging into the flesh of his palm, the soft giving human flesh.

And then the flesh was stone, his skin turning mottled gray like the pebbles he held. When he swung his stone fist into the boulder beside him, the rock cracked, fissuring from that hammering blow.

_Remember what this feels like, _his father said in his head, his voice as clear as if Kevin had heard it yesterday, kind and certain, with that hint of an accent that almost no human could correctly identify.

He opened his stone fist, dropped the pebbles to the ground, then exhaled, and his hand returned to flesh, every nerve end tingling, throbbing with the pulse of red human blood flowing through his veins.

"I remember," Kevin said, loud enough to hear it echo across the vast emptiness of the Null Void, resounding between the hunks of asteroids suspended in that blank space. His voice did not sound like his own, not the monster's voice, but not a boy's, either. He stood on unsteady legs, raised his human hand before his eyes—shimmering reflections and fractured facets, not human eyes, not yet; but not the mutant eyes he'd had this whole time in the Null Void either, and his vision was changing as he looked, returning to what a human should see—and stretched out the fingers like he could grab the thin air and the twilight glimmer and the uncertain gravity binding the asteroids in their orbits. Like he could take hold of the fabric of the universe and tear it asunder, with the power returned to him. "I'll remember!"

### 9.

When Kevin was fourteen going on fifteen, he happened to encounter a pair of Plumber bailiffs making a drop-off in the Null Void. He watched them, waiting until they had released their prisoners, then approached with his hands raised, saying, "Help me, I'm a Plumber's kid. I was on special assignment; there was an accident and I got stuck here..."

They stared at him, a violet-skinned Simularian and a snaggle-toothed Atavistek. Kevin faced them, trying to look confident. His body had been stable for a while now, long enough that he no longer was afraid of falling asleep and waking up to being a monster again. He hadn't been able to check his reflection in anything better than a murky puddle, but hopefully his nose and eyes and everything were back where they belonged, and he looked like a human kid again. Ordinary and unrecognizable.

"What are you?" the Atavistek finally asked. "Where are you from?"

"Human," Kevin said, trying to sound grown up, like he was old enough to have been on an assignment. "From Earth—little yellow star in the Orion Spur. Only level two tech, which is why I was working with lousy equipment."

The Plumbers conferred a moment, consulting their badges, while Kevin braced himself to duck, touch the stone under his leather-wrapped feet and take its strength, if they got stubborn and he had to force the issue.

Finally they turned back to him. "We can take you back to the nearest waystation," the Simularian burbled. "From there you can arrange transportation to your world. Would that be acceptable?"

Kevin hadn't realized until then that he still remembered how to smile with a human face. "Yeah," he said, "that'd be okay."

It took him a few standard rotation cycles to get a lift; he ended up on a music company vessel swinging by Earth to record the current season of humpback whale songs. They dropped Kevin off on the seashore, the North American East Coast. Florida, it turned out, north of Palm Beach.

Under a sky full of familiar stars, he stood in the surf up to his ankles, closed his eyes and felt the saltwater washing over his skin until his feet were chilled to the bone. Then he walked towards the glow on the horizon, until he reached a boardwalk—closed; it was still mid-winter, by the nip of the wind. But a garage station further down the street was open, the lights on in its tiny store.

The guy behind the counter looked up as Kevin entered, then went back to his magazine. Kevin glanced at the cover, then examined the newspapers for sale, read the date on all of them to be sure. Over three years, almost four, since the last date he remembered. Today was almost two weeks after his fifteenth birthday. No wonder the doorframe he had walked through had seemed shorter than he remembered them being; he'd apparently kept aging as a mutated monster. Grown up after all.

Kevin paced down the two narrow aisles, feeling kind of like he was dreaming. Pretzels. Mouthwash. Mountain Dew. Baseball caps. Earth.

There was a freezer bin of desserts at the end of the aisle. Ice cream sandwiches behind the glass, and Kevin had opened it and taken one out and had almost ripped off the wrapper before he remembered—this was Earth. He didn't own anything, not without paying for it, and he didn't have any cash on him.

Though why did he need money; why couldn't he take what he wanted? The freezer was humming, its coils charged with electric current—pure energy, as he hadn't been able to absorb for so long. He'd gotten better at his matter absorption, since he'd gotten his old body back; there hadn't been much raw energy to practice absorbing in the Null Void, but if his control were better with electricity, too...he glanced at the clerk, calculating how much it would take to stun the guy.

But what if his control weren't any better—what if the power surge caused feedback with whatever latent Omnitrix energy might still be in him? What if he became the monster again?

What if he did? asked a little voice inside his head, whining with the freezer's eager enticing hum. A monster stronger than any human being, able to take whatever he wanted—able to take his revenge! With everything he'd learned in the Null Void, he could be powerful enough to take on Ben Tennyson—if Tennyson were even still around, if he hadn't gotten himself killed, stupid hero that he'd been. Wasn't that what he wanted?

Well, maybe it was. But standing here on the planet he'd been born on, Kevin could think of a lot of things he wanted as much. More. He wanted to wade in the surf again, to walk on a boardwalk under the sun. He wanted to play a video game, go to the movies, watch the Superbowl. He would be sixteen in less than a year; he wanted to drive a car, a cool fast classic car, like he used to dream about driving.

He wanted to eat an ice cream sandwich, damn it. The one freezing his fingers now was probably starting to melt.

"Hey, kid, ya gonna buy anything or what?" the guy behind the counter asked.

It wouldn't take much electricity at all. Humans were pretty fragile, as sentient species went. And hell, if he caused enough trouble, Ben Tennyson might come find him, save him the effort of a hunt.

Kevin shrugged and turned away from the freezer as he slipped the ice cream sandwich under his shirt—a Plumber-issued jumpsuit, generic enough to pass for clothes on most low-tech worlds, as long as no one examined the textiles too close. The lining itched, though. He wanted to wear a pair of jeans, too. But the jumpsuit was loose enough to hide the ice cream, and the candy bars he palmed on the way out, too.

The clerk missed it, even watching him suspiciously; the guy had never been to the Null Void. Lucky bastard.

Walking down the dark street, his thumb out to hitch a ride, Kevin ate the ice cream in three bites, fast enough to get a headache, he recalled too late. He rubbed at the sharp pang between his brows, the rough pavement hard under his feet and his legs sore from walking—a fragile human body; but he couldn't remember ever feeling this good.

### 10.

When Kevin was sixteen, he finally had it all figured out. Even on a backwater low-tech planet, there was a lot of work out there for a guy familiar with a wide variety of dangerous aliens, especially a guy who didn't care what side of the law he traded on. He wasn't half-bad at working tech, either; he still had an affinity for electricity and other forms of energy, even if he wouldn't risk absorbing them. He made enough to afford a sweet muscle car, and a garage to keep it in when he wasn't on the road, while he waited for his big break. Once he scored he'd retire in style, off-world, maybe. He still had time to decide. But it wasn't like there was anything keeping him on Earth.

Then he brokered an arms deal between the Forever Knights and a bunch of guys way too in the know to actually be the humans they were posing as—not that he bothered to pry; nothing to do with him either way, as long as they gave him his cut—and everything went to hell so fast that he didn't even have time to think until it was over.

Ben Tennyson looked about the same as before—a little taller, a little calmer, but still stupid as hell. Still whiny and naive and overeager. Still determined and courageous and wildly, ambitiously, absolutely heroic. And dumb enough to stick out his hand to shake Kevin's without hesitation, in spite of everything. Kevin tried hating him for about five minutes, but the most he could work up was mild irritation. Besides, grudges weren't profitable. Not worth it.

And then, Ben's cousin—Kevin knew it should be her power that he craved. Magic, she called it, but he knew energy, knew the tingling feel of it raising the hairs on his skin, and whatever Gwen Tennyson was, she could match a thunderstorm in raw juice. Of course he wanted that; of course he should be drawn to it, should want that unfathomable energy for himself.

Which didn't explain why whenever he thought about her, the first thing that came to mind was wondering why he'd never noticed when they were kids how her eyes were even greener than Ben's. And how warm her hand was when she touched his shoulder.

But it wasn't about them. It was about a promise made to a guy who had saved his life—a Plumber, a hero, dying like all heroes died. It was about the black and green badge, like his father's—only this badge hadn't been decommissioned, with no Plumber official present to deactivate it. It could be his break; an active Plumber's badge would make enough on the black market for him to retire to any world on this arm of the Milky Way.

Kevin didn't get in touch with any of his contacts, didn't bother surreptitiously asking for an estimate. He wouldn't sell the badge. He'd taken it off Magister Labrid's suit knowing he'd never give it up to anyone, not for anything, not without a fight.

It wasn't his father's badge, and even with his experience he still couldn't absorb the materials it was made of. But the energy of its quantum-flux battery still warmed his fingers when he held it, as warm as his father's hands, holding his.

Kevin didn't sleep the night after they—Ben, really, but he and Gwen helped—brought down the alien ship. After he drove the Tennysons back into town, he returned to the edge of the desert, sat in his car by the side of the road and held the Plumber's badge, accessing its features, detect, scan, communicate, its battery's mild heat sinking into his palm as it worked.

Sometime after sunrise, Kevin drove back to the last gas station he'd passed. The single payphone in front wasn't in use. He dug in his pocket for change, fed the slot as he called information.

She still was in Los Angeles, less than an afternoon's drive from Bellwood. And her last name was the same. Divorced, or had she never remarried after all?

Kevin dialed the number, but stopped before the last digit. He'd helped take down an extraterrestrial spaceship last night. He'd fought gangs in New York and dueled alien gladiators and survived years in the prison of the Null Void. But that had all been easy, next to this.

The Tennysons, Ben and Gwen both, would jump at the chance to call their grandfather, to hear from him for even a moment. And maybe Magister Labrid had someone mourning him, back on whatever world he'd come from, someone who would give anything to talk to him again.

Kevin closed his fingers around the Plumber's badge, took a deep breath and hit the last number. Through the receiver pressed to his ear, he heard two rings, then a click. _"Hello?"_ a woman answered. _"Yes? Who is this?"_

Kevin swallowed. "Hey, Mom," he said. "I know it's been a while, sorry..."

### 11.

Kevin Levin is seventeen, and the only thing he's sure about anymore is that life is really, really weird. He used to think it was because he was a freak. Lately he's begun to suspect that's just how life is.

And speaking of freaks... "Come on, Kevin, even if they're not covering the expenses, you gotta come with us. It's a superhero convention, you belong there!"

How he possibly ended up with a guy like Ben Tennyson as his best friend, Kevin can't figure, and has just about given up wondering. "Yeah, great, Tennyson, except that you're forgetting one key detail—I'm not a superhero."

Ben blinks. "What'd you mean?"

Kevin rolls his eyes. "_You're_ a superhero. And Gwen, she is pretty damn super. Me, I'm just a half-alien guy out to make a buck."

"A guy," Ben says, and starts counting off on his fingers, "who helps save people, and sometimes the universe, on pretty much a daily basis, using his _superpowers_. That's kind of the _definition_ of a superhero."

"You know what I mean," Kevin growls.

"No, I don't," Ben denies.

"I'm not like you or Gwen or Max," Kevin says. "Or Alan or Coop or Helen or any of you—I'm not a hero. I was never cut out to be one. What I used to be like, the things that I've done..."

"I know the things you've done," Ben says patiently. "You tried to do most of them to me, remember?"

"Yeah," Kevin says. "So you should know better than anybody why I don't belong at that stupid convention."

"What, because you used to be a juvenile delinquent?"

"No, because I'm a supervillain!"

Ben stares at him for a second, and then, because Ben Tennyson is not only stupid like an umbrella for a Pisccis Volann, but also completely fucking crazy, he starts _laughing_, hard, like almost-falling-down, having-trouble-breathing hard. "Oh, yeah," he gasps out between howls, "I f-forgot, y-you're the invincible Kevin E-e-eleven!"

"Shut up."

"Oh n-no, Kevin Eleven is going to suck out my brains like a Slurpee! Oooooh!"

"Shut up!"

"Then he's going to microwave me like a burrito! And then pump me full of gas!"

"...Uh, what?"

"Like a Seven-Eleven?..." Ben shakes his head. "Never mind. The point is, you're probably the worst supervillain in the galaxy, considering how many people you've saved. But you're a pretty good superhero—maybe not as good as me," and he smirks, obnoxiousness dialed to the max, and Kevin rolls his eyes again, "but close to."

"Except for everything I am," Kevin says. "And everything I've done."

"You're a superhero _now_," Ben says stubbornly.

"Yeah? So what about before?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Ben says, and that's maybe the most annoying thing about Ben, the way he acts like everything's so easy, if you only try. The only thing more annoying is how sometimes when Ben acts like it's easy, it just _is_. It's more powerful than the Ultimatrix, or Gwen's magic and it's not even a power Kevin could absorb, even if he were still doing that.

"Everything before, that's your origin story," Ben says, and grins at Kevin. "Every hero's got one, you know."


End file.
